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You may experience one or more of the following power management-related symptoms on a computer that is running Windows Vista:

• You cannot shut down the computer.
• You cannot put the computer into a power saving mode such as sleep or hibernation.
• Windows Vista does not resume from sleep successfully.
• Certain devices do not work correctly when Windows Vista resumes from sleep.
• You experience instability in Windows Vista when you use a power saving power option.

In Windows Vista, you click to select the Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power check box. However, when you restart the computer, this check box is cleared.

Note: This check box appears on the Power Management tab of a USB Root Hub Properties dialog box. For more information about how to find this check box, see the “More Information” section.

Power consumption may be slightly more than expected on a portable Windows Vista-based computer. This problem occurs if the following conditions are true:

• The computer is using a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) hard disk that is using a SATA Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) driver.
• The hard disk supports Device-Initiated Link Power Management (DIPM) but does not support Host-Initiated Link Power Management (HIPM).
• The computer is idle and running on battery power.

This problem may cause a slightly increased drain of battery power.

Note The increased power consumption is small and may not be noticeable to a typical user.

Consider the following scenario:

• You run a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)-based program on a Windows Vista-based portable computer.
• The WPF-based program runs an animation.
• You are operating the computer on battery power.

In this scenario, the computer’s power consumption unexpectedly increases. Therefore, the computer’s battery power decreases more quickly than expected.

Thankfully those with laptops can save their batteries a bit when using DreamScene. Keep reading →

My first tip was how to change the behavior of the power button. The default is to Sleep, but I prefer to actually Shut Down. It’s only seven tips later, and I’ve already got a different way to do this, mostly because it’s a few steps quicker. Keep reading →

Having used Windows XP for some time, I’ve grown used to pressing the power button to turn off my laptop. In Windows Vista, pressing the power button doesn’t shutdown, instead it ’sleeps’. I don’t know about you, but I never had any luck with ’sleep’ or ‘hibernate’ in XP, something always breaks and I end up restarting anyway, and it’ll take some time for me to give it a try in Vista. So, how can you get back the ’shutdown’ behavior you’ve grown accustomed to? Here’s a pictoral step-by-step on how to make the Vista power button shutdown instead of sleep. Keep reading →